Beverley Hills, and away.

15th-17th Feb

We flew from Salt Lake City to LA, for our final couple of nights in America-land. We based ourselves in Beverley Hills for one reason, and one reason only. The Petersen Automotive Museum. This is a quite epic collection of classic and valuable cars that belonged to a magazine empire bazillionaire called Robert Petersen. He housed it in an old department store building on Wilshire Boulevard which has had a funky facelift, making it one of the most eye-catching buildings in the world.

The collection is vast and priceless. Most of it is housed in the basement of the building, called The Vault. For an extra fee you can have a small-group tour around these cars, 10% of which are covered in transparent waterproof covers much like car-sized versions of disposable hotel shower caps. This is because this jaw-dropping building full of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of cars leaks like a sieve. Go figure.

Apart from oogling at cars, we spent our time here walking and soaking up the bizarre environs of Beverley Hills, Rodeo Drive and Wilshire Boulevard and we ate and drank at ‘not-unexpectedly-inflated’ expense.

We spent some time reflecting on our trip, the second of two epic journeys across this enormous and diverse country.

This trip had taken us to more cities than the first one, but also through more miles of desert wilderness than we could have previously imagined existed.

The South is a very different beast to the rest of the country, and Texas is just Texas: a huge slab of the land that would be happy if you cut it out and set it loose as an island in the Pacific to do its own thing.

Music and BBQ matters more the further South you slip and fossil fuels still rule the roost.

The winters in the south are mild, but cold in the mountains took us by surprise. I know that it shouldn’t have.

Living in a camper is not fun in sub-zero temperatures.

The more cities we visit, the more we fall in love with the small towns of America.

We return to New Zealand on 19th Feb where we will have fourteen weeks to catch up with friends, enjoy the tail-end of summer and autumn, and do some life-sorting. We return to USA at the end of May for our 3rd Tin Can Travels adventure. See you all there quite soon!